The Rifle

A treasured antique rifle gets into the wrong hands in this YA novel by the Newbury Award-winning author: “a truly mesmerizing tale, from beginning to end” (Publishers Weekly).

In 1768, gunsmith Cornish McManus painstakingly crafted his masterpiece: a rifle of extraordinary beauty and accuracy. Though he knows he will never be able to replicate it, Cornish is forced to sell it to a man named John Byam, who carried it with pride into the Revolutionary War.

Passed down through generations, the beloved rifle ends up decorating the mantle of a modern-day mechanic and father named Harv. But what happens then is shocking, terrifying, and completely devastating.

Reader’s guide included